Pamela Anderson
Pam Anderson is a traveler, blues music lover, yoga practitioner, and former public radio fundraiser. Poems in her chapbook Just the Girls (Poetry Box) are dedicated to women in her life (cover art co-created by her daughter and niece). Pam has never seen Baywatch, nor has she ever owned a red bathing suit. PamelaRAnderson.org
How to Harvest Mushrooms
Best to forage on cool September mornings
when ground is blackly wet and saturated
from overnight rain. Underbrush will be flogged
into submission, perhaps making it slick
and difficult to navigate, so wear sturdy shoes
with soles that grip. Carry the wicker basket
and sickle moon blade, hunting near beech and oak
where they are best loved and harvesting the ones
with smooth, honey-colored domes or those
with gill-less underbellies.
Unlike you, mushrooms want nothing;
neither to stay nor to be chosen. They just wait
until you come as our family has always come
to silently cut them away, filling the basket
and returning home to soak in briny water
before rinsing and scattering across clean,
flour-sack cloth to dry in the leaping
white sunlight. Store them where it is cool
and dark, using a lidded glass jar placed
away from any warm space. They will keep.
Soon enough, the world will lean hard into winter,
covering living things under ice and snowy mounds.
And you? You will soldier on, returning again
and again to mushrooms harvested in September.
